Tunable Fano resonances in the ballistic transmission and tunneling lifetime in a biased bilayer graphene nanostructure

Dynamics of the Dirac fermions, in particular the transmission coefficient and the resonant tunneling lifetime are studied across a bilayer graphene electrostatic double barrier structure modulated by an in plane homogeneous electric field. Asymmetric Fano type resonances are noted for the first time in the transmission spectrum of the bilayer graphene nanostructures and are found to be highly sensitive to the direction of incidence of the charge carriers and the applied homogeneous electric field. The effect of the external field on the extended and the evanescent modes is also analysed. Resonant tunneling lifetime is found to be highly anisotropic in nature. The chiral carriers are either accelerated or decelerated by the electric field depending on the energy of the quasi-bound states, the angle of incidence and the magnitude of the applied field. Effects of the external field on the localization of the chiral carriers are also discussed.     

Transport properties of AB-stacked bilayer graphene nanoribbons in an electric field

The electronic and thermal properties of AB-stacked bilayer graphene nanoribbons subject to the influences of a transverse electric field are investigated theoretically, including their transport properties. The dispersion relations are found to exhibit a rich dependence on the interlayer interactions, the field strength, and the geometry of the layers. The interlayer coupling will modify the subband curvature, create additional band-edge states, change the subband spacing or energy gap, and separate the partial flat bands. The bandstructures will be symmetric or asymmetric about the Fermi energy for monolayer or bilayer nanoribbons, respectively. The inclusion of a transverse electric field will further alter the bandstructures and lift the degeneracy of the partial flat bands. The chemical-potential-dependent electrical and thermal conductance exhibit a stepwise increase behavior. Variations in the electronic structures with field strength will be reflected in the electrical and thermal conductance. Prominent peaks, as well as single-shoulder and multi-shoulder structures in the electrical and thermal conductance are predicted when varying the electric field strength. The features of the conductance are found to be strongly dependent on the field strength, the geometry, interlayer interactions and temperature.     

Assessment of bilayer silicene to probe as quantum spin and valley Hall effect

Silicene takes precedence over graphene due to its buckling type structure and strong spin orbit coupling. Motivated by these properties, we study the silicene bilayer in the presence of applied perpendicular electric field and intrinsic spin orbit coupling to probe as quantum spin/valley Hall effect. Using analytical approach, we calculate the spin Chern-number of bilayer silicene and then compare it with monolayer silicene. We reveal that bilayer silicene hosts double spin Chern-number as compared to single layer silicene and therefore accordingly has twice as many edge states in contrast to single layer silicene. In addition, we investigate the combined effect of intrinsic spin orbit coupling and the external electric field, we find that bilayer silicene, likewise single layer silicene, goes through a phase transitions from a quantum spin Hall state to a quantum valley Hall state when the strength of the applied electric field exceeds the intrinsic spin orbit coupling strength. We believe that the results and outcomes obtained for bilayer silicene are experimentally more accessible as compared to bilayer graphene, because of strong SO coupling in bilayer silicene.     

Impurities in a biased graphene bilayer

We study the problem of impurities and midgap states in a biased graphene bilayer. We show that the properties of the bound states, such as localization lengths and binding energies, can be controlled externally by an electric field effect. Moreover, the band gap is renormalized and impurity bands are created at finite impurity concentrations. Using the coherent potential approximation, we calculate the electronic density of states and its dependence on the applied bias voltage.     

Electronic transport of bilayer graphene with asymmetry line defects

In this paper,we study the quantum properties of a bilayer graphene with(asymmetry) line defects.The localized states are found around the line defects.Thus,the line defects on one certain layer of the bilayer graphene can lead to an electric transport channel.By adding a bias potential along the direction of the line defects,we calculate the electric conductivity of bilayer graphene with line defects using the Landauer-Biittiker theory,and show that the channel affects the electric conductivity remarkably by comparing the results with those in a perfect bilayer graphene.This one-dimensional line electric channel has the potential to be applied in nanotechnology engineering.     

Tuning the energy gap of bilayer α-graphyne by applying strain and electric field

Our density functional theory calculations show that the energy gap of bilayer α-graphyne can be modulated by a vertically applied electric field and interlayer strain. Like bilayer graphene, the bilayer α-graphyne has electronic properties that are hardly changed under purely mechanical strain, while an external electric field can open the gap up to 120 meV. It is of special interest that compressive strain can further enlarge the field induced gap up to 160 meV, while tensile strain reduces the gap. We attribute the gap variation to the novel interlayer charge redistribution between bilayer α-graphynes.These findings shed light on the modulation of Dirac cone structures and potential applications of graphyne in mechanicalelectric devices.     

Band structures of Bernal graphene modulated by electric fields

The tight-binding model is utilized to investigate the influence of modulation electric fields on bilayer Bernal graphene (BBG). The electric potential changes the parabolic bands into oscillatory ones, and induces more band-edge states. As the strength of field is strengthened, it would enhance the oscillation of energy band, affect larger range of energy, induced more band-edge states, and cause more overlapping of valence and conduction band. While the period of field is enhanced, the number of sub-bands and band-edge states would increase. However the deformation of energy band is less violent. The essential features of electronic structure are directly reflected on the density of states (DOS). DOS displays many prominent peaks resulting from the induced band-edge states.     

Absorption spectra of unequal width bilayer graphene nanoribbons in a spatially modulated electric field

The optical absorption spectra of unequal width bilayer graphene nanoribbons can be effectively tuned by a spatially modulated electric field. The absorption spectra exhibit many prominent peaks’ structure owing to the one-dimensional subbands. The number, spectral intensity, and frequency of the absorption peaks depend sensitively on the magnitude, period and phase of the modulated electric potential. The relative displacement between the top and bottom nanoribbons also has strong influence on the spectra. For unequal width bilayer graphene nanoribbons without the interlayer hoppings, there exists an optical selection rule originating from the spatial symmetry of the electron wave functions. Most importantly, such a selection rule can be disrupted by the presence of the interlayer atomic interactions or a spatially modulated electric field. These theoretical predictions can be validated by absorption spectroscopy experiments.     

The optical conductivity of bilayer zigzag-edge graphene nanoribbons with external transverse electric fields

The optical absorption properties of bilayer zigzag-edge graphene nanoribbons (BL-ZGNRs) with external transverse electric fields are investigated by taking into account the Coulomb interaction effect in the Hartree-Fock approximation. We study the phase transitions of BL-ZGNRs induced by external electric fields and also the optical selection rules for the incident light polarized along the longitudinal and transverse directions. We find that the excitations from the edge states are crucial for the optical properties of BL-ZGNRs in the antiferromagnetic phase. We show that the low energy part of the optical absorption can be modulated by the external transverse electric field, and there is a broad band low frequency absorption enhancement for the transverse-polarized incident light in the charge-polarized state of BL-ZGNRs.     

Negative differential conductivity of bigraphene controlled by an external voltage in a magnetic field

The current-voltage characteristic of a graphene bilayer has been calculated using the average electron method in the case of applied strong electric and magnetic fields. In the relaxation time approximation, it has been shown that, in bigraphene in the presence of a constant magnetic field applied in the direction perpendicular to the bigraphene layers, these can arise states with a negative differential conductivity. In addition, the generation of terahertz pulses can be performed in this system over a rather wide range of interlayer voltages.     

A first principle calculation of electronic and dielectric properties of electrically gated low-buckled mono and bilayer silicene

The structural, electronic and dielectric properties of mono and bilayer buckled silicene sheets are investigated using density functional theory. A comparison of stabilities, electronic structure and effect of external electric field are investigated for AA and AB-stacked bilayer silicene. It has been found that there are no excitations of electrons i.e. plasmons at low energies for out-of-plane polarization. While for AB-stacked bilayer silicene 1.48 eV plasmons for in-plane polarization is found, a lower value compared to 2.16 eV plasmons for monolayer silicene. Inter-band transitions and plasmons in both bilayer and monolayer silicene are found relatively at lower energies than graphene. The calculations suggest that the band gap can be opened up and varied over a wide range by applying external electric field for bilayer silicene. In infra-red region imaginary part of dielectric function for AB-stacked buckled bilayer silicene shows a broad structure peak in the range of 75–270 meV compared to a short structure peak at 70 meV for monolayer silicene and no structure peaks for AA-stacked bilayer silicene. On application of external electric field the peaks are found to be blue-shifted in infra-red region. With the help of imaginary part of dielectric function and electron energy loss function effort has been made to understand possible interband transitions in both buckled bilayer silicene and monolayer silicene.     

Electrocaloric Effect of P(VDF-TrFE)/SrTiO_3 Bilayer Thin Films

A phenomenological thermodynamic theory is applied to investigate the effect of misfit strain and electric field on the electrocaloric effect of P(VDF-TrFE)/SrTiO 3 bilayer thin films.Theoretical results indicate that the low electric field results in the decrease of the average polarization with the increase of the relative thickness of SrTiO 3 layer,and the high electric field has an opposite effect on it.Moreover,the electrocaloric effect strongly depends on the electric field.The low electric field and the small field change can lead to a maximum of the electrocaloric effect,meanwhile the high electric field or the large field change results in the opposite trend.     

Wilson chains are not thermal reservoirs

The effects of transverse electric field on the electronic structures, exciton states and excitonic absorption spectra in a cylindrical quantum wire are theoretically investigated in detail. The quantum wire is assumed to GaAs material surrounded by the infinite potential barrier. The results show that the external electric field removes the degeneracy of the electron or hole states. The energy levels of electron and hole, exciton binding energy, excitonic absorption coefficient and absorption energy decrease with increasing the strength of the electric field or the wire radius. The effects of the electric field become more significant for wide wires. The phenomena can be explained by the reduced spatial overlap of ground electron and hole states.     

Electronic properties of BN-doped bilayer graphene and graphyne in the presence of electric field

In the present paper, we have used density functional theory to study electronic properties of bilayer graphene and graphyne doped with B and N impurities in the presence of electric field. It has been demonstrated that a band gap is opened in the band structures of the bilayer graphene and graphyne by B and N doping. We have also investigated influence of electric field on the electronic properties of BN-doped bilayer graphene and graphyne. It is found that the band gaps induced by B and N impurities are increased by applying electric field. Our results reveal that doping with B and N, and applying electric field are an effective method to open and control a band gap which is useful to design carbon-based next-generation electronic devices.     

Local compressibility measurements of correlated states in suspended bilayer graphene

Bilayer graphene has attracted considerable interest due to the important role played by many-body effects, particularly at low energies. Here we report local compressibility measurements of a suspended graphene bilayer. We find that the energy gaps at filling factors ν= ± 4 do not vanish at low fields, but instead merge into an incompressible region near the charge neutrality point at zero electric and magnetic field. These results indicate the existence of a zero-field ordered state and are consistent with the formation of either an anomalous quantum Hall state or a nematic phase with broken rotational symmetry. At higher fields, we measure the intrinsic energy gaps of broken-symmetry states at ν=0, ± 1, and ± 2, and find that they scale linearly with magnetic field, yet another manifestation of the strong Coulomb interactions in bilayer graphene.     

Distinguishing spontaneous quantum Hall states in bilayer graphene

Chirally stacked N-layer graphene with N≥2 is susceptible to a variety of distinct broken symmetry states in which each spin-valley flavor spontaneously transfers charge between layers. In mean-field theory, one of the likely candidate ground states for a neutral bilayer is the layer antiferromagnet that has opposite spin polarizations in opposite layers. In this Letter, we analyze how the layer antiferromagnet and other competing states are influenced by Zeeman fields that couple to spin and by interlayer electric fields that couple to layer pseudospin, and comment on the possibility of using Zeeman responses and edge state signatures to identify the character of the bilayer ground state experimentally.     

Band gap tuning of Ge/SiC bilayers under an electric field: a density functional study

The structure and electronic properties of Ge/SiC van der Waals (vdW) bilayer under the influence of an electric field have been investigated by the first-principles method. Without an electric field, the system shows a small band gap of 126 meV at the equilibrium state. Interestingly, by applying a vertical external electric field, the results present a parabola-like relationship between the band gap and the strength. As the negative E-field changes from 0.0 to ?0.40 V/Å, the band gap first increases to a maximum of about 378 meV and then decreases to zero. A similar trend is exhibited for the positive E-field, ranging from 0.0 to +0.40 V/Å. The band gap reaches a maximum of about 315 meV at +0.10 V/Å. The significant variations of band gap are owing to different states of Ge, Si, and C atoms in conduction band and valence band. The predicted electric field tunable band gap of the Ge/SiC vdW heterostructures is very promising for its potential use in nanodevices.     

Effect of a nonuniform magnetic field on the Landau states in a biased AA-stacked graphene bilayer

We study the Landau states in the biased AA-stacked graphene bilayer under an exponentially decaying magnetic field along one spatial dimension. The results show that the energy eigenvalues of the system are strongly dependent on the inhomogeneity of the magnetic field and the bias voltage between the graphene layers, and in particular the reordering and mixing of finite Landau states could occur. Moreover, we also demonstrate that the current carrying states induced by the decaying magnetic field propagate vertically to the magnetic-field gradient within the graphene sample and can be further modulated by the bias voltage between the layers.     

Thermal entanglement in a triple quantum dot system

We present studies of thermal entanglement of a three-spin system in triangular symmetry. Spin correlations are described within an effective Heisenberg Hamiltonian, derived from the Hubbard Hamiltonian, with super-exchange couplings modulated by an effective electric field. Additionally a homogenous magnetic field is applied to completely break the degeneracy of the system. We show that entanglement is generated in the subspace of doublet states with different pairwise spin correlations for the ground and excited states. For the doublets with the same spin orientation one can observe nonmonotonic temperature dependence of entanglement due to competition between entanglement encoded in the ground state and the excited state. The mixing of the states with an opposite spin orientation or with quadruplets (unentangled states) always monotonically destroys entanglement. Pairwise entanglement is quantified using concurrence for which analytical formulae are derived in various thermal mixing scenarios. The electric field plays a specific role – it breaks the symmetry of the system and changes spin correlations. Rotating the electric field can create maximally entangled qubit pairs together with a separate spin (monogamy) that survives in a relatively wide temperature range providing robust pairwise entanglement generation at elevated temperatures.